ELIZABETHAN GARDEN 343 



Warwickshire oak, cleft, is exactly copied from the 

 one in the famous tapestry of the 'Seven Deadly 

 Sins' at Hampton Court. And here again Bacon's 

 advice has been useful: 'The garden is best to be 

 square, encompassed on all four sides with a stately 

 arched hedge, the arches on pillars of carpenter's 

 work, of some 10 foot high, and 6 foot broad.' The 

 'tunnel,' or 'pleached bower, where honeysuckles, 

 ripened by the sun, forbid the sun to enter' follows 

 ancient models, especially the one shown in the old 

 contemporary picture in New Place Museum. 



"The dwarf wall, of old-fashioned bricks hand- 

 made, sun-dried, sand-finished, with occasional 

 'flarers,' laid in the Tudor bond, with wide mortar 

 joints is based on similar ones, still extant, of the 

 period. The balustrade is identical, in its smallest 

 details, with one figured in Didymus Mountain's 

 'Gardener's Labyrinth,' published in 1577 a book 

 Shakespeare must certainly have consulted when lay- 

 ing out his own Knott Garden. The paths are to be 

 of old stone from Wilmcote, the home of Shake- 

 speare's mother. The intricate, interlacing patterns 

 of the Knott beds 'the Knottes so enknotted it ca^i- 

 not be expressed,' as Cavendish says of Wolsey's 

 garden are taken, one from Mountain's book; two 

 from Gervase Markham's 'Country Housewife's 



